Trying again, without the ‘c’ word

EU leaders sent out two messages about the future of the EU constitution at last week’s summit (15-16 June): national governments remain attached to the substance of the stalled constitution, but this substance will have to be packaged in a different form before they try again to ratify it, before the end of the decade.

These are the first conclusions of the year-long reflection launched after the rejection of the constitution by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005.

All EU government leaders admitted, in different ways, that “Nice was not enough” and that they were committed to salvaging the institutional reforms proposed by the constitution.

While acknowledging that the constitution could not be saved in its current form, they insisted that the renegotiated version should not be much different from the text which has already been ratified by 15 member states.

Most of them hinted that they would like to see a new version of a treaty agreed in time for the next European Parliament elections, in June 2009.

Although they postponed discussions on the content of the constitution until the second half of next year, the 25 have already taken the decision to delete a certain word from the text that was rejected by French and Dutch voters: ‘constitution’ will not figure in the new version. The summit’s conclusions refer to the “reform process”, instead of the “constitutional process” which figured in earlier drafts of the conclusions and in statements agreed by previous summits.

Last week’s European Council came up with a tentative timetable for a new treaty negotiation – vague enough to please both those who fear that the constitution will slip away without a timetable and those who do not want to risk setting a deadline.

The process is framed, symbolically, by the Franco-German motor – it will be launched in June 2007 by the German presidency of the Council of Ministers and will be closed under the French presidency in the second half of 2008.

But while the 2007 date is clear – a report on the way ahead, possibly with a road map, will be presented at the 14-15 June 2007 summit – the 2008 date is less so. The conclusions state that the necessary steps to continue the reform process “will have been taken during the second semester of 2008 at the latest”. While for some “the necessary steps” mean a decision on how to proceed with the negotiation of a new version of the treaty, for others they mean a new version of the treaty. It is thus not clear whether the second semester of 2008 is the beginning or the end of the process of renegotiation.

The formulation was kept vague because the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland opposed setting a deadline to come up with a new text. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also had doubts about a deadline, warning against creating expectations and disappointment.

For the same reasons, the conclusions fail to mention the 2009 date as the target for the entry into force of a new treaty, although Wolfgang Schüssel, the Austrian chancellor and the host of the summit, said that the next European elections were “in everybody’s mind”.

The conclusions are also ambiguous about the ratification of the current text, falling short of a call for the process to continue, despite Belgium and Luxembourg’s insistence, and stating only that “it is hoped that this process will be completed”.

Although more ratifications will not save the current text, it is clear that the more countries ratify it, the closer the new version of the treaty will be to the current text.

The summit ducked questions about the substance of the new treaty, but it is already apparent that any renegotiation will have to achieve a difficult balance. It will, on the one hand, have to make enough changes to the current text for the new version to be presented again for ratification in France and the Netherlands, preferably to parliaments, not to a public vote. But on the other hand, the new text will have to be close enough to the current constitution, so that Spain and Luxembourg, which have approved it by referenda, do not need to organise another popular vote to ratify it.

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